


Playing Favourites

by Katzedecimal



Series: Frenemy Mine [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: American Sign Language, Deaf Character, Developing Friendships, Gen, Season 2, Sign Language, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5288003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katzedecimal/pseuds/Katzedecimal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry enjoys some downtime and some deep(ish) talk with his new best frenemy.  Right before all hell breaks loose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Favourites

"He got away?!" The Flash winced as Cisco's voice screeched through his earphones. "How the heck did he get away?!"

"He was too fast for me," Flash gasped. 

Cisco made a noise of disbelief. "You're the freakin' **Flash** ," he howled, "You can run fast enough to break _the time barrier,_ **how** was that lame-ass **Pied Piper** too fast for you?!"

"Oh I don't know, maybe it had something to do with paralysing my muscles again?" Flash replied acerbically. He got up and rubbed his legs, shaking his head. Cisco Ramon and Hartley Rathaway had had some sort of super-brains rivalry going on ever since they'd worked together at STAR Labs. Barry had no idea what fuelled it, other than too much nerd testosterone, maybe. He shook out his legs again then changed back into his civvies and ran off to grab a snack before his next lesson.

* * * *

"I brought curry this time," Barry announced. 

Hartley looked up from shaking out his Pied Piper cloak and grinned, "Oh, great! Thanks. Just let me disassemble my flute and we can get started."

"What lesson are we on today?"

"Classifiers," Hartley replied.

"Cool, I've been looking forward to those," Barry grinned. He took out the take-away packages and started dishing up the food. "That paralysis field hurts like hell, by the way."

"Mmm, well, it's supposed to," Hartley nodded, looking at the tuning fork he'd used to lock up the Flash's muscles, "I can try to damp it down but then I don't think it would be as effective, and if you're going to try to use it on that Zoom guy..." 

"I get it, I'll suffer," Barry sighed.

"Don't move and it'll hurt less," Hartley grinned wickedly. He loaded the ASL lessons site onto his browser and grabbed a bowl of curry.

"So what is it with you and Cisco Ramon, anyways?" Barry asked, "I mean, before?" Hartley chewed in silence for so long, Barry thought he wasn't going to answer. "If I'm prying..."

"You are," Hartley said then sighed, "But I suppose it doesn't really matter now." He sighed again. "Ever heard of Roscoe Dillon?" 

Barry shook his head then paused, "Wait, isn't he that new oil tycoon guy?"

Hartley nodded. "He was a centrifuge engineer back when I first started at STAR Labs. He helped develop the accelerator. Man was a genius with centrifugal force," he chuckled, "If there was anything he didn't know about centrifugal force, he'd be **on** finding out about it. He had a collection of gyroscopes, tops, dreidls, BeyBlades, that sort of thing. He was easy to buy gifts for, I'll tell you that -- if it span, he'd love it."

Barry nodded, not seeing where it was going, "Sounds like quite a guy."

"He was Harrison Wells' favourite. Until I came along."

Barry blinked, abruptly getting it, "Oh."

"Yeah," Hartley sighed, "Harrison told me Roscoe was good but he cast a pall, told me he was full of himself, arrogant - you know the deal. And I swallowed it. I had no reason not to. Roscoe was demoted and moved off the main project. At the time, I thought he deserved it."

Barry nodded, "So when Dr. Wells brought Cisco..."

Hartley touched his ear, "I was working on these at the time. I'm a sonics and acoustics engineer; I wanted to develop a better way to treat hearing loss. Ironic, isn't it?" He blew out another sigh. "I was testing them. I'd always had good hearing and these enhanced it - a lot." Hartley went quiet for a few moments then rubbed his forehead, "Harrison was talking to Cisco about me, the way that he'd talked to me about Roscoe."

"You saw the writing on the wall," Barry said, understanding.

"And when Cisco arrived and I saw that he was replacing me with this unprofessional mouthy little guttersnipe who couldn't even be bothered to dress appropriately--" he broke off as Barry started laughing, "Well... I suppose I didn't take it very well."

"No, you certainly didn't," Barry chuckled, "I guess I can see why, though. Cisco **is** pretty mouthy sometimes." They laughed. 

"What do you think?" Hartley smiled, "Another lesson? Role-shifting?" 

Barry grinned, "Let's do it."

* * * *

The others finally withdrew, leaving him alone. Barry closed his eyes for a few moments then pulled out his phone. He opened his Glide app and pressed record. 'I met Z-O-O-M,' he signed, and pressed send. 

A few minutes later, his notification light flashed and he opened the app to receive the incoming video text. 'I saw,' Hartley signed, looking concerned, 'I was afraid he'd killed you.'

Barry put his tongue over his lower teeth and waved his hand, fingers pointing downward, in a patting motion, 'Not-yet. I can't feel my legs but I'm healing.' 

'Will you run again?'

'We think yes.' Barry sighed and recorded another video text, 'I can't do this. He's too strong. He almost killed me.'

'What-happened?'

Barry thought about how to sign it, musing on the irony of his tragedy being a good opportunity to use his new grammar. He signed 'lightning' then illustrated how he had thrown a bolt, only for Zoom to catch it and hurl it back. 'He caught my lightning and threw it back at me.'

A few moments later he received Hartley's answering video, 'We need a different approach. I'll think-about-it.'

**Author's Note:**

> As previously noted, when describing the signed dialogue, I have chosen not to use proper ASL Gloss, but to use English with hyphens to indicate concepts that take multiple words to express in English, but are expressed in ASL using one sign.


End file.
